New drain around the house

As you know I am in the full flow of getting my house sorted for damp. One of the main problems has been the fact that the outside ground is at the same level as the internal floor. This means that any rainwater is encouraged to make its way into the wall and hence the inside because the lower levels are always wet.

On the south and west facing walls this is particularly difficult as this is where I get the wind driven rain issues. It just so happens that this zone is an area of concrete that has steadily built up over time. So I took the plunge (as I did on the north wall) and created a trench along the perimeter of the wall. I effectively lowered the ground level back to what it would have been when the building was constructed, but with the amount of water that accumulates here I need to ensure that it can drain away quickly and easily so that I don't get any standing water.

One choice would have been to remove the whole of the concreted yard and to lower this whole area, but given my resources and love of my back I decided to keep the concrete yard and create a graveled drain.

So I popped to a local DIY store and found that they didn't have any land drains in stock, I soon found that this was typical and so I improvised. I bought some downpipes and joints and used a 10mm drill to create a makeshift drain. Note that the holes are along the top (this was because it has a slight indent in its squareness and this would be exacerbated by the stones to be placed onto it) and along the lower edge. This means that any water that rises up from the ground will feed into the holes and then track down the drain and away.

My make-shift drain with 10mm holes drilled in

 I then used the trusty spirit level to ensure that it was running down to the main drain. I will be placing some sort of barrier across the top to ensure that the chippings don't fall into the drain and block it.

The outlet of the land drain into the main drains

The trench was then back filled with the 20mm limestone chippings. The 20mm chippings were used as they should not fall into the 10mm holes, thus creating a long term fix. I shall also at some point get some geo-membrane and put this down below the top layer of chippings so that any dust / dirt etc doesn't get carried into the drain and block it.

The trench back filled with 20mm limestone gravel

With the rain that we have had over the past couple of days it was good to see that the trench has not filled up with water, so I think that it must be working.